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    Supreme Court Ruling Means Italy’s ‘Bunga Bunga’ Saga Is Not Over

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    The ruling sets the stage for yet another trial related to the scandal involving Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister of Italy who died last year.After 14 years, the 21 women accused of helping to cover up Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s evening bacchanals had hoped that their long legal saga over the so-called “Bunga Bunga” scandal might be over.But Italy’s Supreme Court overturned their acquittals, ruling on Monday that the women could be retried, according to the general prosecutor on the case — a setback for the women and an indication of how large the shadow of Mr. Berlusconi, who died last year, still looms in Italy.The court decision sets the stage for yet another trial related to a scandal that gripped Italy and set off an international tabloid frenzy in 2010, when news emerged about parties Mr. Berlusconi was hosting at his villa near Milan.In the first trial, Mr. Berlusconi was accused of paying for sex with a 17-year-old woman at one of the parties and abusing his office to cover it up. Both the woman and Mr. Berlusconi denied it. Mr. Berlusconi was initially found guilty, but was later acquitted because of a lack of evidence that he was aware at the time that the teen was underage. In the second trial, several of Mr. Berlusconi’s associates were convicted of aiding and abetting prostitution by procuring women for the bacchanals, which became known as the “Bunga Bunga parties.”The third trial involved 21 women accused of accepting hush money to lie and protect Mr. Berlusconi in the earlier court proceedings. A lower court had acquitted them on procedural grounds, but prosecutors in Milan appealed the verdict.The deputy prosecutor general at the Supreme Court, Roberto Aniello, confirmed that Italy’s Supreme Court in Rome had ruled on Monday that the 21 women could be retried. The court has not yet explained its decision; that typically follows in a statement.An appeals court in Milan is set to take up the case, though it was not immediately clear when that would take place.The New York Times reached out to several of the women, who were not immediately available for comment. Some of the 21 have, in the past, admitted to taking money or expensive gifts from Mr. Berlusconi, but said it was not intended to buy their silence. More

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      Elon Musk Hails Italian Leader Giorgia Meloni at Awards Ceremony

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      Mr. Musk described Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as “authentic, honest and thoughtful.” She used her Atlantic Council spotlight to defend Western values.Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, and Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister of Italy, were the stars of a black-tie dinner in New York on Monday that highlighted Mr. Musk’s increasing involvement in politics.Ms. Meloni had chosen Mr. Musk to introduce her as she received a Global Citizen Award from the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank that cited “her political and economic leadership of Italy, in the European Union” and of the Group of 7 nations “as well as her support of Ukraine in Russia’s war against it.”The prime minister and the billionaire business leader have bonded over the years. They share concerns about artificial intelligence and declining birthrates in Western countries, which Mr. Musk has called an existential threat to civilization.He described Ms. Meloni on Monday as “someone who is even more beautiful inside than outside” and “authentic, honest and thoughtful.”“That can’t always be said about politicians,” Mr. Musk added, to laughter from the crowd of 700 at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in Manhattan.After thanking Mr. Musk for his “precious genius,” Ms. Meloni delivered a passionate defense of Western values. While rejecting authoritarian nationalism, she said, “we should not be afraid to defend words like ‘nation’ and ‘patriotism.’”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      El posible segundo atentado contra Trump genera alarma en el extranjero

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      Existe la preocupación generalizada de que las elecciones de noviembre no acaben bien y de que la democracia estadounidense haya llegado a un punto crítico.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]En los nueve años transcurridos desde que Donald Trump entró en la política estadounidense, la percepción global de Estados Unidos se ha visto sacudida por la imagen de una nación fracturada e impredecible. Primero un atentado contra la vida del expresidente, y ahora un segundo posible atentado, han acentuado la preocupación internacional, suscitando temores de una agitación violenta que podría desembocar en una guerra civil.Keir Starmer, el primer ministro británico, ha dicho que está “muy preocupado” y “profundamente perturbado” por lo que, según el FBI, fue un intento de asesinar a Trump en su campo de golf de Florida, a menos de 50 días de las elecciones presidenciales y dos meses después de que una bala ensangrentó la oreja de Trump durante un mitin de campaña en Pensilvania.“La violencia no tiene cabida alguna en un proceso político”, afirmó Starmer.Sin embargo, la violencia ha tenido un lugar preponderante en esta tormentosa y tambaleante campaña política estadounidense, y no solo en los dos posibles intentos de asesinato. Ahora existe una preocupación generalizada en todo el mundo de que las elecciones de noviembre no acaben bien y de que la democracia estadounidense, que solía ser un modelo para el mundo, haya llegado a un punto crítico.En México, donde este año se celebraron las elecciones más violentas de la historia reciente del país, con 41 candidatos y aspirantes a cargos públicos asesinados, el presidente Andrés Manuel López Obrador dijo en una publicación en la plataforma social X: “Aun cuando todavía no se conoce bien lo sucedido, lamentamos la violencia producida en contra del expresidente Donald Trump. El camino es la democracia y la paz”.En un momento de guerras en Europa y el Medio Oriente y de inseguridad global generalizada mientras China y Rusia afirman la superioridad de sus modelos autócratas, la precariedad estadounidense pesa bastante.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Authorities Open Manslaughter Investigation in Italy Yacht Sinking

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      A prosecutor involved in the inquiry into the sinking said it was “plausible” that crimes were committed during the accident.Italian authorities said on Saturday that they had opened a manslaughter investigation into the sinking of the Bayesian luxury yacht, but that they had not yet zeroed in on any potential suspects.The sleek, $40 million sailing boat went down fast in a storm off Sicily’s coast on Monday morning, killing Michael Lynch, a British tech billionaire; his teenage daughter, Hannah; four of his friends; and one member of the crew. The captain escaped on a lifeboat with 14 others.On Saturday, Ambrogio Cartosio, the prosecutor in charge of the case, said at a news conference that it was “plausible” crimes were committed during the accident.“There could be responsibilities of the captain only,” he said. “There could be responsibilities of the whole crew. There could be responsibilities of the boat makers. Or there could be responsibilities of those who were in charge of surveilling the boat.”Here is what the authorities said on Saturday:It will be difficult to determine the cause of the sinking until the yacht is brought to the surface and inspected, which could take weeks.Five bodies were found in the same cabin.The yacht sank at an angle, with the stern — where the heavy engine is situated — having gone down first.The captain and the crew, who have been holed up in a Sicilian hotel with other survivors, are allowed to leave Italy. But prosecutors said that they still want to ask them more questions.The authorities did not perform alcohol or drug tests on the captain or the crew.The authorities would not comment on whether hatches on the deck had been left open, which would have allowed water to pour in during the yacht’s sinking.In addition to possible manslaughter charges, the authorities are also investigating the possibility of a negligently caused shipwreck, a crime that carries up to several years in prison upon conviction.Investigators said they were focusing on why the 184-foot-long Bayesian, which was built in 2008, went down so quickly, especially when other yachts nearby weathered the storm.Executives at the company that built the boat have said there is nothing faulty with the design of the yacht and have tried to shift the blame to the crew.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Divers Find 2 Bodies From Yacht That Sank Off Sicily

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      The discovery came after the vessel sank this week in what some witnesses described as a waterspout, or a small tornado, during a violent downpour. No names were immediately released.After three days of searching the hull of a sailing yacht that sank off the coast of Sicily, divers on Wednesday recovered the bodies of two passengers who were believed to have been trapped inside their cabins when the vessel went down, officials in Sicily said.The yacht, the Bayesian, with 12 crew members and 10 passengers, was caught in what some witnesses described as a waterspout, essentially a small tornado on water, during a sudden and violent downpour in the pre-dawn hours of Monday.The recovery of the two bodies was confirmed by Salvatore Cocina, head of Sicily’s civil protection agency. What looked like a green body bag was lifted from a vessel in Porticello, Sicily, on Wednesday afternoon and loaded onto a waiting ambulance as a large group of rescuers stood by in their uniforms.On the dock, a crowd of reporters and bystanders watched on in near complete silence, as a church bell tolled in the background.Although 15 people made it to safety and the yacht’s cook was confirmed dead, the fate of the remaining six people, including a British tech entrepreneur, Mike Lynch, had been formally unresolved until the update on Wednesday.In addition to Mr. Lynch, the remaining people who had been identified as missing by the authorities were his daughter Hannah; Jonathan Bloomer, the chairman of Morgan Stanley International; his wife, Judy Bloomer; Christopher J. Morvillo, a lawyer at Clifford Chance; and his wife, Neda Morvillo.Mike Lynch in 2011. Pool photo by Ben GurrThey were part of a group of people celebrating a legal victory for Mr. Lynch, who was acquitted in June of fraud charges tied to the sale of his company, Autonomy, to the tech giant Hewlett-Packard.The body of the yacht’s cook, Recaldo Thomas, who held Canadian and Antiguan citizenship, was recovered earlier from the water, the Sicilian civil protection agency said.Deep sea divers with the Vigili del Fuoco, Italy’s firefighting corps, were able to reach the bodies after dealing with what Luca Cari, their spokesman, described as “very difficult” conditions.The yacht had settled on its side, about 165 feet below the surface, and divers could only remain underwater for a limited amount of time. To complicate matters, they had to navigate through broken furnishings and electrical wiring that blocked the tight spaces inside the hull. More

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      Hunter Biden sought US government help for Ukrainian company Burisma

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      Hunter Biden lobbied the US government for help in securing a lucrative energy contract in Italy while his father Joe Biden was vice-president, newly released documents show.A tranche of previously undisclosed documents now made public under a Freedom of Information Act (Foia) request reveals that the president’s son wrote to the then US ambassador to Rome, John Phillips, in 2016 seeking assistance on behalf of the Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, of which he was a board member.The request was revealed in documents issued by the US state department following a protracted effort by the New York Times seeking their release that lasted more than three years.While there is no evidence that the government met Hunter’s request for help or that his father knew of it, the revelation is likely to fuel Republican claims that Joe Biden’s political position was used to help his son’s business activities.The revelations come as Hunter Biden prepares to stand trial in California next month on charges of tax evasion on his income from Burisma and other foreign businesses.They follow his conviction in June on charges of illegal gun ownership during a time when he was using crack cocaine.Republicans have sought for years to tar Joe Biden with his son’s business activities, alleging that they reveal evidence of family corruption in a fruitless impeachment effort against the president last year.Even before the latest release, James Comer, the Republican chair of the House oversight committee, which has spearheaded the congressional investigation into Hunter Biden’s business affairs, called the affair “the biggest political corruption scandal of our history’s lifetime”, in remarks last week to the rightwing channel, Newsmax.The pursuit of Biden has lost much of its political sting since his withdrawal from the presidential race last month, after weeks of pressure from fellow Democrats following a disastrous debate performance.The New York Times reported that the decision to release the documents containing the latest revelations was taken weeks before Biden stepped aside in favour of the vice-president, Kamala Harris, meaning that it was unlikely that the documents had been deliberately withheld until they had become less politically damaging. The White House signed off on the release a week before the president announced his withdrawal, the paper reported.The state department has a track record of being slow to release records in response to requests. The Times said it had challenged the thoroughness of previous releases because they failed to include files stored in a laptop that Hunter Biden had left at a computer repair shop in Delaware.Hunter’s letter to the ambassador – the contents of which were entirely redacted – appeared intended to help secure a meeting with the head of the regional government in Tuscany in furtherance of a geothermal energy project for which Burisma was seeking regulatory approval for in the Italian region.It elicited a cautious response from US officials at the embassy and there is no evidence that a meeting ever took place as a result.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I want to be careful about promising too much,” a US commerce department official based in the embassy wrote in response.“This is a Ukrainian company and, purely to protect ourselves, U.S.G. [United States government] should not be actively advocating with the government of Italy without the company going through the D.O.C. [Department of Commerce] Advocacy Center.”Enrico Rossi, the president of the Tuscan regional government at the time, told the New York Times that he never met Hunter Biden and had no recollection of the US embassy contacting about the Burisma project.A White House spokesman said Joe Biden was not aware of his son’s letter to the ambassador at the time.Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, called his client’s outreach to the ambassador a “proper request”.“No meeting occurred, no project materialised, no request for anything in the US was ever sought and only an introduction in Italy was requested,” Lowell said in a statement. More

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      Western Anxiety Makes for an Unexpectedly Smooth G7 Summit

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      Political weakness, intractable wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East, and challenges from Russia and China combined to create solidarity behind American leadership.The Group of 7 summit that ended on Saturday went extraordinarily smoothly by the standards of a gathering where the leaders of major powers come together. That was a measure of the anxiety the leaders feel about deteriorating trends in Ukraine, in the Middle East, in China and in their own political futures.There was a dispute over the use of the word “abortion” in the communiqué, prompted by the host, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy, but that was seen as a gesture to her domestic constituency. On important issues of geopolitics, there was little that divided the group.President Biden may appear politically vulnerable and uncertain of re-election, but this summit meeting was another example of unchallenged American leadership of the West, especially on contentious issues of war and peace.With the main headlines about new support for Ukraine — a $50 billion injection built on the money earned from frozen Russian assets, and long-term security pacts with Ukraine signed by the United States and Japan — this gathering was just the first in a series intended to bolster President Volodymyr Zelensky in the war against Russia.It is followed this weekend by a so-called peace summit in Switzerland that aims to show that Ukraine has global support and is willing to negotiate on fair terms with Russia, even though Moscow has not been invited. Then, NATO holds its 75th anniversary summit meeting in Washington in mid-July.While Ukraine will not receive an invitation to begin membership talks with NATO, the alliance, led by the United States, is preparing what Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken has called “a bridge to membership” — a coordinated package of long-term military and financial support for Kyiv that some have likened to a diplomatic and military “mission.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Pope Francis Clears Way for Carlo Acutis to Become First Millennial Saint

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      Pope Francis attributed a second miracle to Carlo Acutis, one of the last steps toward canonization.Pope Francis cleared the way for an Italian teenager to become the first millennial saint by attributing a second miracle to him, the Vatican announced Thursday.The teenager, Carlo Acutis, is often called the patron saint of the internet among Roman Catholics because of his computer skills, which he used to share his faith. He died of leukemia in 2006 when he was just 15.Carlo was born in London to Italian parents and moved with his family to Milan when he was a child. His passion for Catholicism bloomed early, his mother, Antonia Acutis, told The New York Times in an interview in 2020. At 7, he began attending daily mass. His faith inspired his mother to rejoin the church, she said.He was called to serve, finding ways to help those less fortunate and donating to the unhoused, she said. In the months before his death, Carlo used his self-taught digital skills to create a website archiving miracles. He also enjoyed playing soccer and video games.After he died, Ms. Acutis told The Times that people from all over the world had told her about medical miracles, including cures for infertility and cancer, that happened after they prayed to her son.“Carlo was the light answer to the dark side of the web,” his mother said, adding that some admirers had called him an “influencer for God.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mystery of Mona Lisa’s Location May Be Solved

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      A mash-up of geology and art history has identified a likely setting for one of the world’s most famous paintings.She’s been smeared with cake and doused with acid. Vigilantes have stolen her, and protesters have defaced her. She’s been lasered and prodded, displayed for the masses, and relegated to her own basement gallery. More recently, thousands urged billionaire Jeff Bezos to buy her, and then eat her.There is no bottom, it seems, to the mysteries of the Mona Lisa, the Leonardo da Vinci painting that has captivated art lovers, culture vultures and the rest of us for centuries. Who is she? (Most likely Lisa Gherardini, the wife of an Italian nobleman.) Is she smiling? (The short answer — kind of.) Did da Vinci originally intend to paint her differently, with her hair clipped or in a nursing gown?While much about the art world’s most enigmatic subject has been relegated to the realm of the unknowable, now, in a strange crossover of art and geology, there may be one less mystery: where she was sitting when da Vinci painted her.According to Ann Pizzorusso, a geologist and Renaissance-art scholar, da Vinci’s subject is sitting in Lecco, Italy, an idyllic town near the banks of Lake Como. The conclusion, Pizzorusso said, is obvious — she figured it out years ago, but never realized its significance.“I saw the topography near Lecco and realized this was the location,” she said.The nondescript background has some important features; among them, a medieval bridge that most scholars have held as the key to da Vinci’s setting. But Pizzorusso said it is rather the shape of the lake and the gray-white limestone that betrays Lecco as the painting’s spiritual home.“A bridge is fungible,” said Pizzorusso. “You have to combine a bridge with a place that Leonardo was at, and the geology.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More